Six Iraqis have been killed and 15 wounded in a US-British air strike on the southern provinceof Basra, an Iraqi army spokesman said today.
The spokesman, in a statement on the state Iraqi News Agency, said the planes patrolling a "no-fly" zone over southern Iraq entered Iraqi airspace and later targeted civilian sites in the province of Basra.
He said Iraqi anti-aircraft units fired at the planes which returned to bases in Kuwait.
The United States military said warplanes taking part in US-British air patrols attacked five air defence targets in the southern no-fly zone in response to anti-aircraft fire from the ground.
The strikes were the latest in an increasing series of western air attacks in no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq as the United States and Britain build a force of more than 220,000 troops in the Gulf for a possible invasion of Iraq.
The US Central Command said aircraft used precision-guided weapons to strike four fiber optic communications centres near Al Kut, southeast of Baghdad, and a military command and control centre near Basra.
The Central Command said from its headquarters in Tampa, Florida, that the targets were attacked after Iraqi forces fired anti-aircraft artillery at western warplanes.
"The specific targets were struck because they enhanced Iraq's integrated air defence network," a US military spokesman said.
"Target damage assessment is ongoing," he said of the strikes, adding that all of the warplanes had safely departed the target area.
The no-fly zones were set up after the 1991 Gulf War to protect Kurds in northern Iraq and Shiite Muslims in the south from Baghdad's forces. Iraq does not recognise the zones.